


I'm Sorry, Is This Our Stab Wound?

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [6]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Bruce Banner, One Shot, POV Third Person, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26857216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: The Hulk can't heal everything.
Series: October 2020 Prompts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	I'm Sorry, Is This Our Stab Wound?

**Author's Note:**

> Day 6, for the prompt "get it out"

The fight was not going well.

Tony should probably have gotten the hint when Steve had assured them as they disembarked from the quinjet, suited up and raring to go, that this mission probably wouldn’t last too long—a jinx if he’d ever heard one, but he’d been too preoccupied with getting the armor on to pay much attention at the time. S.H.I.E.L.D. had only reported a small disturbance around this countryside area, after all, and the only reason they called in the Avengers was that those reports also indicated a strange energy reading consistent with what had been recorded in New Mexico three years ago. It was expected to be a quick-and-easy, in-and-out, don’t-engage-unless-absolutely-necessary type mission, Steve had said.

_Fuck Steve._

But even if he’d been under the false hope that _hey, maybe things might actually work out like they’re supposed to today and I won’t be hammering out dents in the suit for the next week_ before they’d actually landed, he still should’ve gotten the hint when the six of them walked up to what every one of JARVIS’s scans had told them was an empty field only to find it swarming with aliens—yes, _aliens_ , because that “strange energy reading” was because of _intergalactic portal activity_ and _why couldn’t NASA_ warn _them about these things once in a while?_

Or when the alien beings—which were about seven feet tall and had pointy spears and that was all Tony really registered about them because _did he mention the pointy spears_ —had turned out to be hostile alien beings, and simultaneously decided that the Avengers looked a lot like dinner. Or maybe a late brunch; he wasn’t sure what time it was.

Or when there turned out to be much more of the alien beings than originally planned for, and apparently an open field was not a good place to fight when there were six of you and approximately seventy-eight tredecillion of them.

When Clint ran out of arrows, when Thor was sent flying headfirst into a rock, when Natasha’s guns were smashed into shreds of metal, when Steve was knocked down with a spear to the face and came back up (because he always came back up, that was his whole _thing_ , besides the patriotism and the shameless use of guilt-tripping to win arguments) with a streak of blood oozing from his cheek, when the Hulk disappeared somewhere under a horde of aliens… when any of that happened, Tony should have gotten the hint.

But no; instead the thought only crossed his mind once he was staring at his bare hand where the metal glove had been quite literally ripped away, and the only thing he could think was _Cap owes me twenty bucks._

Tony tucked his now-very-exposed hand against his chest and took off in the other direction, the hum of his repulsors almost lost amid the snarl of the alien that had just clawed his armor off and the cacophony of the rest of the fight. His flight path was a little wobbly now that he was one limb down, but he managed to skid out a landing on top of a nearby pile of boulders.

The helmet flipped up and Tony drew in his first breath of fresh air in hours, but unfortunately that fresh air was also filled with the smell of blood and sweat and whatever the _hell_ that goopy stuff was that leaked out of the few aliens they’d managed to kill.

He looked at the sparking wires broken off at the place where the suit’s arm was supposed to connect to the hand. That… probably wasn’t good to have so close to his skin, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it.

“Heads up!”

Something came spinning at his face, and Tony reached up reflexively to grab it. Captain America’s shield slammed into his palm, shuddering from the force of the throw. A second later, Captain America himself popped up from a wide crevice between two more boulders, looking around in every direction before he spotted Tony, who waved the shield.

“Hey, Rogers. You lose something?”

“You weren’t supposed to _catch_ that.” Steve hauled himself up so that he was crouched opposite Tony, leaving a smear of red on the rock.

“Well, what did you throw it at me for?”

“I didn’t throw it at—behind you!”

Tony ducked just as one of the alien spears shot past him, nearly clipping the top of his head and landing with its point buried deep in the boulder, the handle vibrating. Yes, he was very glad his face had not been where it was. Even with the Iron Man suit on.

“See, that’s the thing,” he said, letting the helmet slide back up over his face. “We’ve got alien creatures here, with who knows _what_ kind of unfathomable tech that can travel between _galaxies_ , and then they come here and attack us with spears. It’s a letdown, gotta admit.”

“Considering how much damage they’ve done with just the spears, I’d be grateful that’s all they brought,” Steve said. Tony tossed the shield back to him and he caught it deftly. “And it isn’t even—ten o’clock!”

“Really? I’d say it’s about noon.” But Tony obediently dropped down for the second time as another spear hurtled toward them, coming within an inch of Steve’s chest before he knocked it off course with the curved part of the shield.

When he dared to look up, Steve was also pressed flat against the rock beneath them, trying to make himself a smaller target for the spears that were now flying like darts at a carnival game. He spotted Tony watching him and sighed.

“Hey, why do you get the world-weary sigh? I’m the one who just had his suit used as a chew toy and I’ve now listened to your orders twice in a row.” Tony rolled to the side and pushed himself up into a sitting position behind a raised part of the boulder. “Something’s definitely wrong here; is it karma? JARVIS, why aren’t you giving me warnings for impending impalement? I know I had to have listed that in your emergency protocols somewhere—I added a bunch of stuff when I joined the cape-wearing squad of Earth’s Mightiest.”

Steve looked amused in spite of himself. “You know, only Thor actually wears a cape.”

“Semantics. JARVIS?” 

There was no answer for a few moments (enough time for five more spears to embed themselves in the rock above their heads and for one to deflect off Steve’s shield and tumble off the edge), which was worrying, to say the least.

“JARVIS? J? Come on, buddy, talk to me.” Tony held his breath.

Finally, the British-accented voice of his AI crackled from inside the helmet. “Apologies, sir. I fear I am experiencing some di-di-di—” An indecipherable mash of syllables made Tony wince. “G-g-good night, sir.”

The display went dark and Tony felt himself crumple to his knees under the dead metal shell he was suddenly wearing. Funny how the suit felt like a second skin to him while he was flying, but now it might as well have been an elephant sitting on his back. And limbs. And chest.

“Oh, no. Not good. J? Don’t do this to me.” He could feel Steve staring at him, but it was hard to lift his head now that the suit was dead weight.

Everything was crushing down on him and his lungs were squeezing and his heart—

“ _Shit_ , let me out, let me out, let me out.” Fortunately, the eject button still worked, and Tony practically fell out of the suit and onto his hands and knees. He gasped for air a couple times as the suit folded in on itself.

He blinked up at Steve. Wow, the sunlight was a lot brighter out here. “So what else you got? Hit me with it, I can take it.”

Steve, being Steve, refused to engage in his pessimism, because he was no fun like that. Instead, he turned to peer over the edge of the boulder—the edge facing _away_ from the murderous alien creatures, because if he’d peered over the other edge, his face would’ve been torn off. “Over here. I think there’s a gap between these rocks that we might be able to fit through.”

“Oh, is it more preferable to die in a small, cramped, space?”

“I won’t be the judge of that, but I’m pretty sure there’s something about ‘safety in numbers.’”

Before Tony could ask him what he meant, Steve was twisting onto his side and letting himself drop down into said gap between rocks. A moment later, there was a muffled _thud._

Which of course meant that Tony followed him down into the gap, because the alternative was staying up here with the alien spears being thrown at his head, and his head no longer had that very nice layer of gold-titanium-alloy-armor surrounding it—not that that would have prevented him from being skewered anyway. Whatever these things were made of, they could clearly cut through solid stone.

So down Tony rolled into the dark, nearly scraping his face on the rough sides of the two boulders that now formed the bread of the Tony Stark Sandwich, until he too landed on the muddy ground. It was very damp down here, probably because of the lack of sunlight, but there was enough light streaming in from the crack above that he could make out Steve a few feet away.

“Doing alright?”

Tony let his head fall back against the boulder. “Oh, yeah. Caves are my favorite places; really, you shouldn’t have.”

“This isn’t a cave.” Another voice in the dark from Steve’s other side, and then Natasha’s red hair caught the light. “It’s just two rocks. Two very big rocks.”

“Is that how they teach you to make observations in spy school?”

Natasha pulled her knee up to her chest with her clasped hands. “If I did everything the way they taught me in spy school, you five would be bleeding corpses out on that field and I would be halfway back to the quinjet by now.”

“Is the restraint hard?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” They shared a grin before Tony spotted more movement from the shadows.

“Who else is here? Is it assembly time?”

“Sure, if no one minds carrying me out.” Clint leaned forward from next to Natasha, but only his upper body moved. Tony’s eyes traveled downward to the bloody mess that used to be a right leg—halfway bandaged up with what looked like strips from Thor’s cloak, but somehow that only accentuated the sheer _redness_ of the wound. “In case anyone is wondering, yes, the spears do hurt.”

“Well, there goes Plan A.” Tony caught a glimpse of sunlight shining off a metal chestplate a half second before Thor sat up.

“Stark? Where’s your suit?” The thunder god was holding a hand to a bleeding spot on his head that was staining his blond hair a wet brownish. His eyes were large, and it might have just been the dim lighting, but Tony was pretty sure one of his pupils was more dilated than the other.

The rock at Tony’s back suddenly shuddered, and he had a bad feeling that he knew where the aliens were redirecting their spears.

“Suit’s done for the day. Are you okay there, Point Break?”

“Of course!”

 _Right, he’s got a concussion._ “Okay then. Hey, where’s Banner?” Not that there was any chance in the world that the Hulk would have been able to squeeze into this tight gap between rocks, but the only other alternatives were that he’d run off into the wilderness (a constant possibility, as Bruce kept reminding them) or that he was still out on the field trying to smash aliens (the most likely option, but also the most dangerous one, and Tony had the impression that a concussed Hulk would be a lot harder to deal with than a concussed Thor).

Natasha made a vague series of hand gestures to the left, then frowned and repeated the motion on the right, then just shrugged.

“Thank you for the report, Agent Romanoff.”

The rock shuddered again, harder, and Tony wasn’t the only one who twisted around to check on it.

“Is that something to worry about?” Clint asked. He sounded unconcerned, but then again, he’d also sounded unconcerned during their last mission when he’d nearly had his arm cut off at the elbow, so that meant nothing.

Steve frowned. “It shouldn’t be. It’s a rock, I doubt it’s gonna—”

Another shudder, and tiny cracks began spiderwebbing across the surface.

Tony looked at Steve in exasperation. “You had to say something.”

More cracks, and that’s when everyone in the team shifted into planning mode (or, three-fifths of the team, anyway).

“If my suit was working, I could use the shield function to stabilize the rock,” Tony muttered under his breath. “But that’s not an option and something tells me Cap’s shield isn’t gonna cover all of us—we could try to get behind the other one, but then there’s nothing to stop the aliens from charging around the side—”

“We could send out a diversion,” Natasha mused. “I run out and distract them, while the rest of you sneak away before this rock breaks open completely—”

“They’d kill you in seconds, Nat,” Clint interrupted. “Also, I’m not gonna be doing a lot of sneaking for a while.” He pointed to his leg.

Steve’s plan was the simplest, but also the one that got shot down the fastest. “Thor could fly us out—”

“No, he can’t.”

“But—”

Natasha jerked her head in Thor’s direction just as he slumped sideways against the boulder, his face contorted as though he couldn’t decide whether to pass out or throw up. “No, he can’t.”

One of the cracks had bulged so much that Tony could probably stick his hand into it, and Clint had to duck to the side to avoid getting hit with splinters of shattered stone. The entire rock was shaking under the barrage of magic alien spears from the other side— _no, not magic, not magic; SCIENCE, I refuse to be killed by something that isn’t quantifiable—_

And then the rock split open, a yawning mouth that sent sunlight pouring in from the field, and almost instantly all the spears that it had been shielding the team from shot into the opposite wall. 

There was a triumphant-sounding snarl-squawk from what was probably the leader of the aliens, if they were advanced enough to have a hierarchy like that, and _why was he thinking about this he was going to fucking die—_

The Avengers tried their best to stay covered, but there was nowhere to hide from the onslaught. Thor wrapped himself around Clint, the closest one to him, and Steve lifted his shield—a tiny red, white, and blue circle that was nothing against the seemingly endless assault—in front of him and Natasha, but spears were now sprouting handle-up in the grass mere inches away from their hands, and it was inevitable that one of the aliens would land a hit.

Tony curled up into himself and waited to be impaled, through the neck or spine or stomach or heart—

_Wait, I already did that, didn’t I? Surely the universe would be more creative than that._

He waited.

And nothing.

Waited some more.

Still nothing.

Finally, Tony couldn’t stand it anymore and opened his eyes; if his last sight was of the tip of a spear shooting toward his eyeball, well, at least it would be on-brand.

But instead all he saw was a wall of green, and he frowned in confusion for a moment before he looked up and the Hulk was staring down at him, a determined look on his face as he stood where the broken rock had been, blocking the Avengers from certain death.

“Hey, big guy,” he managed to say once he got over the leftover adrenaline rush that came with impending mortal peril. Around him, the others were wide-eyed; Steve lowered his shield an infinitesimal amount. “Did I ever tell you you’re the best? Because you’re the best.”

“Hulk help,” came the rumble in response. Tony felt his face split into a grin.

From behind him, he heard Natasha’s voice, normal at first but then arcing up into alarm. “Thor? Thor!”

Tony spun around just in time to see Thor stagger to his feet and take off into the sky with Mjolnir clutched in his grip. A second later, thunder shook the sky and lightning came zigzagging down, splintering on its way to the field. Shrieks and yowls echoed from the aliens in response, along with a horrifically mental-image-inspiring sizzling sound, and Tony was suddenly very glad he couldn’t see what was going on.

Then he heard it. The gasp.

Just a small intake of breath, but one that Tony never would have expected to hear from the one who gave it.

He turned just in time to see it—the tip of a spear, sliding inexorably forward with a wet _shiiiink._

Jutting out of the Hulk’s chest.

Tony couldn’t believe it for a moment; it just seemed so unimaginable, like a fake Halloween prop. But then the Hulk lurched forward, and Tony saw the other end of the spear buried _so deep oh god_ into his back.

Green liquid started welling around the point of the spear, running down the length of it and dripping off the tip onto the ground at Tony’s feet. His mind whispered at him from a distance: _blood, that’s blood, I thought it might be that color, but I never saw it for myself before._

_Because I’ve never seen anything make the Hulk bleed before._

The Hulk didn’t seem to know what to do with it either. He reached for it with those huge hands that were starting to shake as more and more blood gushed from the wound, but pulled back at the last second. He looked at Tony as though for help, his eyes enormous.

As Tony watched, the green started to leak out of those eyes, filling slowly up with brown; and then all of a sudden he was shrinking down and Bruce was standing there swaying, the spear looking twice the size stabbed through his much smaller body.

“I—” was all Bruce got out before he had to drop to his knees, and then to his side, red blood rapidly covering up the green that spattered on the ground. His breath caught and he gasped for a few seconds before he was able to inhale again—the spear pumped up and down with his chest, and it was _horrible, just—_

Tony scrambled to his side, his hands hovering over his teammate but not daring to touch because he would mess it up, he would, and he really really did not want to make this worse. “Okay. Okay. Bruce? You with me?”

“Tony—” Bruce coughed out, before his eyes went wide and he scrabbled for the spear, his soaked hands slipping off the handle. Tony reached out and grabbed them, because if there was one piece of medical knowledge he’d picked up—was it from Rhodey or was he spending too much time with S.H.I.E.L.D.?—it was that you _do not mess with whatever is stuck in there because pulling it out will one hundred percent make it worse._

( _Unless there’s poison on it,_ his brain helpfully added. Yeah, he’d definitely been spending too much time with S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Any one of his teammates had more experience in this sort of thing than he did, but when Tony looked wildly around, everyone else was gone. Thor was in the sky dealing divine punishment, Steve and Natasha were back on the field fighting the few remaining aliens that hadn’t gotten fried by lightning, and Clint… actually, Clint was exactly where he’d been, but had apparently passed out sometime in the ten seconds Tony had looked away.

Meaning Tony was very likely the only one who’d actually seen what happened. And he was the only one here to handle it.

Bruce had been lying still a moment ago, but now he was shifting around, groaning as the movement elicited a fresh burst of blood from the wound in his chest. His eyes squeezed shut, and tears leaked out of them onto ghost-pale skin that suddenly flushed with a vivid green.

“Shit—” Tony backed up, but the transformation he’d expected didn’t happen. Instead, Bruce’s muscles only seemed to stretch for a brief second before going loose again and the green vanished. Then it reappeared, the veins in his neck coloring and the groan in his throat building to a rough growl—and then he coughed again and he was Bruce, back to Bruce, but already he was changing—

Tony had never seen him like that before—it had always been just one or the other, but now Bruce seemed caught in the middle, pulled in two directions by the hurt and the injury and the Hulk naturally trying to come out and heal it but each weakening attempt only making it worse.

There was so much _pain_ in Bruce’s eyes.

He wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what the fuck to do, and the words spilled out before he realized he was speaking. “I don’t know what the fuck to do, oh god, oh god, I don’t know what to do—”

He was panicking, and he needed to stop doing that right now because that wasn’t gonna help—

And now Bruce’s mouth was moving, and he was trying to say something, and so Tony shut up to listen.

Bruce’s breath was coming out in little gasps that could barely be heard, but his mouth was forming the same words over and over. Tony strained his ears.

“... get… get it out… get it out… get it out, get it out, get it out get it _OUT!_ ” Bruce’s voice arced up and he reached again for the spear in his shaking chest, but his hands fell limply against the dirt.

And then his voice was a deep growl, and his eyes were huge and shining green, and he spoke again but this time it wasn’t Bruce who was speaking.

“Get it out,” he said, and then he went motionless.

Tony drew in an unsteady breath. “Banner? Come on, Bruce, quit it, you’re scaring me.”

No response. Bruce was completely still except for the blood still trickling from where the spear was stuck through. Still and silent, and if there was even a flicker of green behind his closed eyelids, Tony couldn’t tell.

He sat like that for what seemed like an eternity but that had to have been only a few seconds, because his heartbeat was thudding so loudly in his ears that he didn’t even hear anyone else approach before there was a hand on his shoulder.

Tony’s mind was still locked on _mission-fight-aliens-danger_ , so he didn’t even pause to think before he was whipping around, hands up ready to… well, maybe not punch the shit out of—he felt too exhausted even to stand up—but maybe to somehow fend off whatever rogue alien had stumbled upon him.

“Whoa, hold up!” Steve stepped out of the way of Tony’s hand, even though he probably barely would’ve felt it, and looked past him to Bruce’s passed-out form. “What the hell happened?”

Tony shook his head. “I would say he needs a doctor, but, you know…”

There was movement around them, but it was only Natasha and Thor—all of the aliens appeared to be squished and scorched grayish blobs on the field. The cut on Thor’s head was now uncomfortably swollen, and he looked like he was about to drop, but he leaned down and scooped up the unconscious Clint like it was the easiest thing in the world. Natasha just stood there next to Steve, her mouth opening as she saw Bruce, but replaced almost instantly with a brisk voice.

“Right, we need to get him back to the jet.” She looked around at the rest of the team and amended her statement. “Actually, we need to get all of you back to the jet.”

Tony nodded, his head dipping down a little lower than it needed to, like the strings holding him up had been cut. He bent down over Bruce, since obviously he wasn’t going anywhere by himself, but stopped when he heard someone talking.

“... need to do that, Tony. Tony!” It was Steve, and Tony wondered how many times he’d said his name before he’d heard.

“Yes, Captain?” He would have added a joke, but his heart was nowhere near in it, and he wanted to throw up every time he looked at the spatters of mixed red and green blood in the grass.

“I said you don’t need to do that. I got him.” With the easy strength to rival Thor’s, Steve stooped down and came back up with Bruce in his arms. The spear jostled with the movement, and a few more drops of blood worked their way out.

“Just be careful,” Tony said, because that was all he had to say. 

Steve nodded as the rest of the team started on their way back. “Tony, I got him.”

* * *

The quinjet was soaring through the clouds by the time Bruce finally opened his eyes.

Tony had been on the verge of falling asleep, pinching himself every couple seconds (he wished he had JARVIS for an alarm, but the suit was currently lying in a heap in the back of the jet, in need of many, many, repairs after whatever the exposure from that alien energy pulse had done to it), but he sat straight up when he saw that Bruce was awake.

“How’re you feeling, Banner?” he asked, forcing his voice to be casual. He didn’t want to completely freak the guy out after he’d just woken up, after all.

Bruce was blinking hazily, up at the ceiling and around the quinjet like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Then his eyes landed on Tony and it all seemed to come rushing back. He grabbed at his chest, where a spare T-shirt (Tony didn’t think it was his, but Clint had sworn he’d never seen it in his life) covered up the layers of bandages.

“Did you—”

Tony reached out and gently placed a hand on top of Bruce’s, who stopped moving and instantly seemed to relax. “Yeah, big guy. We got it out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
